London 2012: Black Locals Feel Forgotten

Wightman Road, Haringey, London, UK

The Borough of Haringey, where me and my sister was born, is an area considered one of the most deprived areas in all of Britain. More than half of its 250,000-plus residents are ethnic minorities. But as the Olympics go on across town, Finsbury Park’s run-down sports center faces shutdown. The local council says it can’t pay for the center’s upkeep and is considering handing it over to a consortium of sports clubs that may not offer round-the-clock access. That worries Johnson and his friends, a group of older men, most of them from immigrant families, who gather daily to do punishing circuit training on the track and in the bare-bones gym. In between circuits, they joke and catch up on life. “They should have done this place up for the Olympics,” says Johnson, who is now 57. “We don’t get a lot out of the games at all.”